[Summer 2026]
Hits and B-sides
par Kenneth Hayes
[EXCERPT]
Looking at the photographs in Jeff Wall’s first Canadian survey exhibition in twenty-five years is a bit like listening to classic rock. It recalls a moment of intensity from the recent past, but although the images remain as clear as ever, a scrim of time and familiarity blurs and softens their perception. The pictures are drained of their imposing scale and physical presence when seen in reproductions, as they are most often, and in some cases time has dulled their topical and polemical edge. So many events have transpired in Afghanistan since the making of Dead Troops Talk (1992), for example, that it is difficult to recapture the sharp thrill of first seeing that picture. It now feels, more than ever, like a history painting.
The curator of this Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) exhibition, Kathleen Bartels, made a number of unusual decisions: to forgo chronology and categorization by either technique or genre; to juxtapose large and small pictures; and to mix not only the famous early Cibachrome light boxes and the current huge inkjet prints, but also silver gelatin prints. This refusal of categorization produces a warm, pleasant effect that is somewhat like a jumble of memories or a playlist left to loop. This is not, perhaps, an ideal introduction to Wall’s work, as it glosses over the radical technical shifts that have marked the course of his long career, but hanging little-known B-sides alongside greatest hits invigorates both, at least for those who already know something of his themes and methods. The Flooded Grave (1998–2000), for example, is a high point in his career from around the turn of the millennium, when his meticulously constructed en plein air sets were supplemented by digital collage; its uncanny effect reappears in the nearby Rainfilled suitcase (2001), a modest picture, presumably made with simpler means.
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[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 132 – TABLEAUX ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: TITRE ARTICLE]
Jeff Wall, born in Vancouver in 1946, is known for his meticulously reproduced scenes in large backlit images. A member of the unofficial Vancouver School, he has developed a language that draws upon history of painting, literature, and film. His work has been shown at documenta, the Venice, São Paulo, and Sydney biennales, and major museums from the Tate to MoMA. Among the honours he has received is the Audain Prize for the Visual Arts. He is represented by Gagosian Gallery. gagosian.com/artists/jeff-wall
Kenneth Hayes is a retired architectural historian who lives in Sudbury, Ontario. He occasionally writes contemporary art criticism, with a particular focus on photography. He is the author of Milk and Melancholy (MIT Press and Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, 2008), a book about images of milk splashes in photo-conceptual art from 1965 to 1985.